But they weren't entirely spared—and one "big-boned" patriot decided to strike his blow for freedom by giving a low-paid TSA screener the surprise of his young life.

On November 18, a "fat middle aged" blogger who goes by SubliminalPanda entered the TSA checkpoint at the Raleigh-Durham airport in North Carolina. He was wearing a kilt. This wasn't merely a lark; SubliminalPanda had taken to the comfort of the kilt months ago, and the garment had since become his daily clothing of choice. And when you find some clothing that comfortable, do you muck up the whole experience by yanking on some underwear? No you do not.

SubliminalPanda opted out of the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) body scan (read our primer on the tech behind these machines) and chose the pat-down instead. The TSA told Ars last month that its procedures for dealing with the kilted-and-sporraned traveler were a matter of national security and could not be divulged. This seemed at least a tiny bit odd; having someone go through the procedure and then report on it would provide much of this information. Which is where SubliminalPanda comes in.

Officer Gill met me at the patdown area—a glass-enclosed area to the left of the AIT. There were the usual chairs and mat with the paired footprints in the middle of them. I dutifully assumed the position as he introduced himself. I wondered if I was getting a corsage? Candy? Maybe just a little dirty talk first? Gill was a kid—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-three years old. He sheepishly and nervously admitted that he was new to the TSA and that I was his first patdown. Poor bastard, losing his virginity to a middle aged fat man in a kilt.

The enhanced patdown is very much like a consensual rape. The screener asks before touching each body part with the back of his hand. “I’m going to put my hand between your beltline and belly, is that okay?” Obviously, the only correct answer here was yes. I could have said no, but that meant that I’d be hitch hiking to Chicago if I wasn’t arrested and charged with a fine. So Officer Gill starts with my backside, then chest and belly. After that, I stretched my arms out, and we finished the upper body. He then took a courageous breath and steeled his reserve, asking me to step forward with my left foot. This was it

Gen X’ers, remember the old commercials for Milton Bradley’s Operation game? In the game, players take turns using metal tongs to remove plastic pieces from an electrified board with the shape of a man on it. If the tongs touch metal surrounding the piece’s cutout, the board makes a loud buzzing noise and the patient’s nose glows with a red light. “Don’t touch the sides!” warns one of the kids in the commercial. That’s the enhanced patdown, essentially.

With blue latex gloves on, the backside of Gill’s hand caressed my ankles and calf. The hand moved up my knee and vanished along my inner thigh, under the kilt...

Buddafingahs!

Had I a light bulb for a nose, it would have glowed.

The entire post is well worth a read, though I have to confess feeling real empathy for Officer Gill. What a way to make a living (and one suspects this was not the strangest experience Officer Gill has had in the weeks since).

While the TSA's recently "enhanced" pat-downs have spawned calls for commando-style kilt-wearing (and much, much worse), the issue has of course been a live one for years. Pat-downs may have been less invasive in the past, but they were still done in some cases, and the screeners could still be baffled by the sight of a man in a "skirt." For instance, one traveller recounted a 2009 airport experience involving kilts on the flyertalk forums this way:

I'm in line at Terminal E's main TSA checkpoint at IAH [Houston's main airport] and there are two gentlemen about 10-12 spots in front of me in line wearing kilts. No one is actually paying them much extra attention (and I have seen men in kilts before at IAH and other US airports) and we all continue toward the belts/bins One of the "kilted" men was chosen for a random (as he did not alarm) secondary it seems; they had “placed” him into their magic plexiglass cube of indignity to do the pat down. Here is where it gets funny. I wait by the belt and slowly put my shoes on so I can hear and watch some of the fun.

The TSOgre says immediately, and I quote EXACTLY, "Why you wearin’ a skirt, bro?" The kilted traveler just kind of stood in a stunned silence. The TSOgre proceeds to pat the front and back of the torso down but then stops at the waist and calls a supervisor. Mister pay band F supervisor shows up and the TSA’s finest continue to chat about how to pat down the lower body. The line lackey TSOgre suggested the gentleman raise his kilt (no, I am not kidding ), to which the band F supervisor actually says, “That is not a good idea”. At this point the other kilted man had put his shoes back on and walked away and I had to go as well. When I left the kilted traveler was laughing and in good spirits.

Another intrepid kilt-wearer confirms that the old TSA pat-downs were a bit less aggressive; "junk" was left unmolested. Michael Hanscom regularly wears (and flies in) a kilt, and he wears it commando.

This past summer, though, as I was flying up to Anchorage from Seattle, I was pulled aside after going through the metal detector for a patdown. I was surprised, especially when the TSA screener told be that I was pulled aside specifically because I wore the kilt...

The pat-down itself was about what I’d expect of a normal pat-down — thorough enough, with a quick run of the hands up my legs and under the kilt, but not so thorough that the screener knew whether or not I was commando. No fondling was involved, though there was a cursory brush-down of the front of the kilt that jostled things around a bit. A bit surprising, but at the time, I just shrugged it off.

So, for the curious, some questions have been answered. Yes, men do wear kilts through US airports. Yes, those kilts are sometimes worn commando. Yes, this can confuse and/or embarrass TSA agents. And yes, thanks to the new pat-downs, resistance may be encountered whether or not you're wearing skivvies. Now you know.

If he was wearing actual Highland wear, TSA would've had a bigger problem with the knife in his sock than the fact that he wasn't wearing any underwear.

As someone who likes to keep the option of wearing an actual, traditional kilt for special occasions, the Utilikilt folks annoy me. I guess it's like when your favorite indie band makes it big or something. The joy of wearing a skirt used to be something reserved for Scots and Scots émigrés to wear at weddings

This made me think, I wonder if anyone going through security had their gender mis-identified and was directed to the wrong gender TSA agent. It would be funny to see them get offended when they realized what happened.

Must be a slow tech news day for Ars. This whole issue is so five minutes ago. Most of the vocal, online supporters of the National Opt Out day turned it into National Cop-Out day by not protesting at all. Plus, the TSA wisely avoided confronting people by not using the back-scatter scanners very much. As I said on the forums, the score was: TSA, 1; protesters, almost zero. This whole thing was a fake, online-only hysteria generated by a bunch of Gen-X and Gen-Y types who aren't good political strategists, or good at effective protesting, either.

Heh, the week I bought my utilikilt, it was because I saw someone at the SEATAC airport wearing one when I was arriving (actually he was on my flight in as well but I sat no where near him). I complimented him on his kilt, he complemented me on my Aperture Science shirt.

Because the TSA has the backscatter machines mysteriously out of service. Apparently they aren't critical enough to national security to risk the bad PR and ridiculous crowds they would have otherwise had to deal with, and Obama and Napolitano can continue to wipe their asses with the 4th Amendment.

Because the TSA has the backscatter machines mysteriously out of service. Apparently they aren't critical enough to national security to risk the bad PR and ridiculous crowds they would have otherwise had to deal with, and Obama and Napolitano can continue to wipe their asses with the 4th Amendment.

I'd really like to see an article corroborating this. If it really happened, I completely missed it.

If he was wearing actual Highland wear, TSA would've had a bigger problem with the knife in his sock than the fact that he wasn't wearing any underwear.

As someone who likes to keep the option of wearing an actual, traditional kilt for special occasions, the Utilikilt folks annoy me. I guess it's like when your favorite indie band makes it big or something. The joy of wearing a skirt used to be something reserved for Scots and Scots émigrés to wear at weddings

Because this is in the comment section i will refrain from placing a "fuck you the sam" picture in this post.

Because the TSA has the backscatter machines mysteriously out of service. Apparently they aren't critical enough to national security to risk the bad PR and ridiculous crowds they would have otherwise had to deal with, and Obama and Napolitano can continue to wipe their asses with the 4th Amendment.

I'd really like to see an article corroborating this. If it really happened, I completely missed it.

The first page of Google hits for my first search turns up a bunch of blogs and news aggregators, including DailyKOS:

... do not change the names of things to suit your own cowardice and give to slavery the title of peace.

Quote:

For it is not ignorance of what is going on that is your problem, but a kind of torpor which has laid hold on you; because of this you are stirred neither by glory nor by disgrace. You have given up everything in exchange for your present slothfulness, thinking that you have plenty of freedom because your backs are spared, and you are allowed to go here and there by the grace of your rich masters.

Excerpts from a speech made by Macer during the years of turmoil that eventually led to the rise of Julius Caesar.

What I realize here is that he is also going commando on an airplane seat and no doubt leaving his commando sweat there for the next person.

This. That was the only thing I could think about after reading the headline.

The sweat would've been absorbed by his kilt, methinks.

+1. I wouldn't want my junk touching an airplane seat, duh. What, just because a man's in a kilt, he lifts it every time he sits? No. It's still a covering of the nether regions, and that for good reason concerning all involved.

If he was wearing actual Highland wear, TSA would've had a bigger problem with the knife in his sock than the fact that he wasn't wearing any underwear.

As someone who likes to keep the option of wearing an actual, traditional kilt for special occasions, the Utilikilt folks annoy me. I guess it's like when your favorite indie band makes it big or something. The joy of wearing a skirt used to be something reserved for Scots and Scots émigrés to wear at weddings

Utilikilts are comfortable, and only have a passing similarity to a traditional kilt, so I don't know why you'd be upset about people wearing them. I wear mine fairly often in the summer, and occasionally in the winter. It's quite a bit more comfortable than shorts, and I certainly don't try and pretend it's a real kilt.

Because the TSA has the backscatter machines mysteriously out of service. Apparently they aren't critical enough to national security to risk the bad PR and ridiculous crowds they would have otherwise had to deal with, and Obama and Napolitano can continue to wipe their asses with the 4th Amendment.

More likely to avoid a situation where they had to keep rescuing a bunch of asshole protesters from being lynched by the the hundreds of other passengers on the plane who were having their holidays fucked up by these morons.

TSA passenger screening methods, both before the back-scatter scanners were put in place, and afterwards, is mostly political theater anyway. It is about LOOKING EFFECTIVE, not being effective. Politics is about appearances, not about what is really true. The online-only protesters appeared to be wimps. The TSA appeared to take the proper approached to dealing with them by minimizing any airport security hassles and confrontations during the busiest travel period of the year, Thanksgiving. The political score: TSA, 1, online protesters, 0.

I quit a job i had that paid VERY well because i no longer could, in good conscience, continue to work for that company.

Are we all such sheep that we accept this kind of behavior from the Bush administration's (/sarcasm) minons just because "they were ordered to do it?"

In a bad economy people can't afford to be as picky about what jobs they'll take, especially on the lower end of the job scale . It may well be a choice between doing a crappy job like being a screener or you and your kids living in a shelter.

Now I'm sure you'll say you would rather be homeless than work a job that offends you but most people are living in the real world...